ED2012 Theatre Review: Hinge Presents – Scooped (Hinge Theatre)

Out of piles of newspaper come three headline-writing hacks, grey to the bone with newspaper print and grey to the soul with cynicism. This sharp new play riffs on popular fringe grotesquery, with all the associated gurning and claw-handed limping, whilst drawing out intelligent questions about who writes who in the press. At the centre are two ‘naturalistic’ characters, grounding the whole story in reality and translating absurdity into a comment on the unscrupulousness of certain sections of the postmodern press (not ThreeWeeks…). The ending, like a tabloid, is throwaway, and both the characters and the script certainly deserve a better resolution, but this is a clever and stylish take on an old style with lots of life and ideas.

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